1st and Amistad
by dvshipper
Summary: He couldn't walk away again. She wouldn't let him. Daniel/Vala. Implied apocafic. T for language. Based on "You Found Me" by The Fray.
1. Chapter 1

Title: 1st And Amistad  
Author: dvshipper  
'Verse: Stargate SG-1  
Claim/Characters/Pairing: Daniel Jackson/Vala Mal Doran  
Rating: PG-13 (language)  
Warnings: possibly implied apocafic.  
Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or its characters, I just play with them. Rob, please don't sue me, because I don't really have much money anyway.  
Summary: He couldn't just walk away again. She wouldn't let him.  
Table/Prompt: Inspired By 'Songs', You Found Me, The Fray

A/N: Omg, it's been so long, be gentle with the reviews. Thank you so much, dannysgirlsg1! I truly and honestly don't know what I would do without you. No beta, btw.

She stood looking at the silhouette straight in front of her. Not since they worked things out did she think she would have to say these words in a most earnest manner, the question she wasn't sure she could ask without tearing up. There was a part of her that knew he couldn't be blamed for all of this; held accountable yes, but not blamed. However, in the back of her mind she blamed him for every little hurt his actions had caused, every time she was left wanting because he hadn't been there, when she needed to talk but he was unavailable. It wasn't in her nature to let this slide and she was going to tell him that.

"Where you been?" That question she had rehearsed on the long bus ride to Texas sounded so meek, so…feminine. She wasn't used to not having the powerful strength to combat her emotions with. But that vigor had been pulled away by one long rope leading back to him.

"Ask anything," the dark figure outlined by the sunset told her without turning around, bringing up his cigarette to take a long drag. The voice was still that same warmth that she had been first attracted to, but the fire in it had been extinguished somehow. Someone or something had dulled his passion to a timid flicker and that made her heart break.

"Where were you when _everything_ was falling apart? When the world was crashing down and in shambles? When I waited and waited for a call that you were okay and that you would be coming home? And ya know what, you never did call or even, I don't know, at least send a letter! So I had to come all the way out to the middle of fucking nowhere to drag your ass back to civilization where you belong." Her anger began to surface in full, fueling her words. Deep down, no matter what he had done, she still cared for him. A little tough love never hurt anyone though.

"You found me now, isn't that what's important to you?" the defeated sounding man asked her. No. It wasn't what was important to her. She needed him to know that things would only be better when he knew that what she was doing was out of love. Things were so mixed up.

When he'd gone off to 'find himself', to 'get away for awhile', when their side was losing and all that they had worked for could collapse at any moment…she was hurt. Devastated. Crushed that he would just walk off when they needed him. When she needed him. But in his long absence, she had had time to think.

"I know you," she started, interrupted by his huff of disbelief. Ignoring it, she continued. "No matter what you say, deep down you know these people are worth saving. There's a potential in them that is beyond what any of us can imagine. They trust you. And no matter how much you want to shrug them off, you can't escape the fact that you care. You won't leave forever. You can't. I know that if I let you run off, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. I would be forever guilty if I went on knowing that I could have brought you back to your passion, but chose not to."

There was a silence marked only by the soft breeze whispering above the dirt road. With his back still turned to her, he tilted his head up to the sky as if asking the opinion of the gods. When no voice of thunder came from the heavens, he turned around to face the only being he considered his goddess.

The expression on his dirty, smudged face surprised the woman in front of him. The deep blue pools of blue were stormy with pain and guilt, his dark eyebrows furrowed above them. A few days' beard marked his jaw, adding to the overall gruffness of his appearance. There was the ghost of a lost boy on his features, looking for someone to come and save him. It was, however, just a ghost, having been beaten down by a man who thought he could leave his problems by just running away. The lost boy wanted to be found. The grown man wanted to use his long legs to find new ground.

"I can't go back," he told her quietly, willing her with his eyes to accept his statement. It was a lie though, and she couldn't.

"You have to. We need you out there. I need you." A single tear escaped her eye at just the right moment to punctuate her last statement. All his insecurities would cease to exist if he just realized that all he needed was love. Her love for him and his for her.

"How do we fix this? Everything's a mess and…." He trailed off, his hand trembling as he brought up his hand to take another pull off his cigarette. "I don't think I could handle all the pressure again."

"One step at a time. And _you_ won't handle it. We'll deal together." Slowly and carefully, she walked nearer to him. Gazing into his eyes, searching for a 'yes', she took his large hand in hers. Almost as if you could watch the gears moving in sync again, she saw his mind work out the consequences of yes and no. The worried valleys in his forehead eased into one smooth plane and she had her answer. The lost boy and the grown man became a single human, being found by running into the arms of his lover.

As the world burned to the ground around them, they would take it on and help to forge a new one. One built on justice and truth and all the things that they held dear. He couldn't just walk away again. She wouldn't let him. Together, they could stay focused.


	2. Chapter 2

Title: 1st And Amistad, Chapter 2/?  
Author: dvshipper  
'Verse: Stargate SG-1  
Claim/Characters/Pairing: Daniel Jackson/Vala Mal Doran  
Rating: PG-13  
Warnings: apocafic.  
Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or its characters, I just play with them. Rob, please don't sue me, because I don't really have much money anyway.  
Summary: He couldn't just walk away again. She wouldn't let him.  
Table/Prompt: Inspired By 'Songs', You Found Me, The Fray

A/N: This definitely might be becoming a series, depending on the response. Keep in mind, this might be depressing reading for some of you. Not betad.

The bus ride home to Colorado Springs was just a dim reminder of what they couldn't escape. As the miles of scenery went by, they saw all the things that they had failed to save. Homes burned to the ground, fields destroyed by the craters of rogue bombs, shimmering eyes in the dark black of dense vegetation. When the war had started, there was a good cause; a mission. Before long though, it had changed back to the petty rivalries that plague humans wherever they are.

The tension between nations, neighbors, brothers, escalated faster than any other conflict in human history. Word spread and it was only minutes later that the first planes were sent. The world was set ablaze as if the verbal arguments of leaders were pure gasoline and the men behind the computers held a lighter. What was meant to be an alliance for survival ended up destroying more than anyone had expected.

Over eighty percent of population had been killed and Daniel stood by, yelling at the men in charge to take their fingers off the trigger. It didn't do any good though and he certainly wasn't going to pick up a gun to fight back. When you stand in front of a tidal wave, you can't battle it back with a garden hose.

So when the smoke cleared, Daniel and Vala went on the move to find survivors. There had to be people out there, others who had been saved by the same type of tough, underground bunker. It had been months since the fighting had stopped though and many people had probably run out of food and were too scared to venture topside. After so much senseless patriotic killing, it was sad to think that there were others still dying, of starvation.

A group of people had banded together in Colorado Springs however and the couple found them. There couldn't have been a more diverse group of people. A mechanic (Sam), air force colonel (Cam), boxer (T.), commercial fisherman (Jack), and a politician who had somehow ended up there after fleeing Washington (Congressman Landry). The plan was to find other survivors, gather supplies and start fresh. A new civilization built upon the ashes of the fallen one that had come before it. They called themselves Pioneers, homesteading a new chapter in the course of human history.

For a long while, Daniel was more than willing to help out with the cause and do what needed to be done. Other survivors were seeking refuge and helping the cause. Teams were going into the field every day to gather supplies and help anyone they came across. Everything was going fine. That was until new intel came in that there was another group of survivors in the west. Those who weren't interested in a new era. Those who were still fighting for the old. In their eyes, the Pioneers were the disloyal people in the east, forgetting how the world once was. Word was that they had a name for their group: The People. The People were amassing weapons. And at a very alarming rate.

That was when Daniel fled, leaving Vala with the Pioneers to deal with whatever happened next. There was just no way he could be part of the cause anymore. Rebuilding a civilization was no good if it was just going to get destroyed again. Nothing had changed in the world. There was still someone trying to burn down everything he fought for. In his mind, he reasoned that if he had no cause to fight for, maybe he could finally find some peace. Deep down inside him though, he knew that by searching out that quiet, he was leaving a piece of himself behind.

For weeks after that, Daniel wandered aimlessly around North America, or what was left of it. Every once in a while, he'd come across a person, maybe two. Other nomads, like he himself had become. From them he gathered that another war had broken out. The Pioneers and the People were battling it out. The People for dominance and the Pioneers just to survive. At this rate, he wondered if it would end before everyone had killed each other. Most likely not.

In the faces of these nomads, Daniel saw not hope or possibility, but despair. These people had just been caught in between the clashing of world leaders' egos. These scraggly, hungry, struggling men and women were the result of the fall of what he had been fighting to rebuild. They weren't able to stop what had ruined their lives, their homes, their world. The power of survival was now the only power they held. Animals left to walk across the face of the earth.

Maybe Daniel was a pessimist. Maybe he should have realized that things could get better. But at that moment, as he was walking down the highway that had been cracked by the heavy burden of too many tanks, he just could not find it in himself to see the good that was still left in the world. The weight of his situation had finally broken him. And that's how he ended up near what was once the Texas/Mexico border, on a dirt road, smoking a stale cigarette.

There had always been the possibility that Vala would come after him, find him somehow. But he never thought she'd have the power to bring him back. The more he thought about it all on the bus though, the more he came to realize that he shouldn't have been surprised. If there was one person left in the world that could save him, in every possible way, it was her.


End file.
